Learn, understand, challenge, repeat.

Learn as much as you can about all sorts of topics, even if you don’t have specific plans for those topics

Learn enough that you don’t just know the facts, but that you actually understand why things are the way they are. You should be able to predict things you haven’t yet learned if you understand the concepts. If you don’t understand something yet, keep learning.

Learn your fundamentals: language skills, math, logic, statistics, the science of research, history, politics, basic psychology, and the physics of whatever realm you’re operating in (meaning that in today’s day and age, you should learn about both real-world physics and about how information flows on the Internet).

A lot of people don’t know how to teach themselves, so it’s probably important to point out that learning to do so effectively is a big part of thinking for yourself. Learning how information is presented, as well as what’s often left unsaid, is important. Learn how to read graphs and charts and statistics. Improve your information literacy: Learn how to find credible sources, how to judge the credibility of a source, and what “credible” actually means. It doesn’t mean infallible.

As a general rule, don’t accept a fact until you have multiple credible confirmations of it. That might not be possible, but when information comes from untrustworthy sources, remember that. Learn the difference between something that you’ve learned and accepted and something that you’ve just heard on social media a few dozen times. This is easier when you have an understanding of what you’re learning. True things fit in better with other true things.

Don’t assume things are false just because the source isn’t credible, either. Just do extra research to verify. Do your own experiments to confirm, if possible.

Sometimes you’ll realize something you’ve accepted might be wrong, possibly because it conflicts with something else that you learned. When facts don’t add up, challenge them. You’re not infallible. Replacing a fact you accepted long ago isn’t a failure; it’s a victory. Many people are incapable of doing so.

Learn to distinguish between facts, inferences, theories, and opinions. (Note that established, accepted scientific theories often fall into the “fact” category.) Facts are verifiable. Inferences are based on facts; they’re evidence-based conclusions that can help to build theories. Theories are explanations, and they can be disproven but haven’t been proven (else they would be facts). Information presented as facts can be false. Theories and inferences can be poorly formed, even if the facts are sound (and especially when they are not). “Opinion” is a word people use to defend flawed theories. If the opinion isn’t a preference, there’s a good chance it isn’t an opinion at all and is just intentional misinformation. “You can’t argue with my opinion” isn’t applicable when the “opinion” is provably false - then it’s just a failed fact, inference, or theory. And even when it is an opinion, it can still be criticized.

Learn about logical fallacies. Even if you don’t call out the person using them, try to notice them in the wild, both by people you agree with and people you disagree with. But especially by people you agree with. Learn how to notice other ways people are misled.

Depends on your perspective. Would it be fine for Meta Threads to replace it? Threads supports ActivityPub, so in some ways it likely interacts better with the fediverse.

If we agree that Threads isn’t a suitable replacement, then clearly there’s some criteria a replacement should meet. A lot of the things that make Threads unpalatable are also true of Bluesky, particularly if your concern relates to the platform being under the control of a corporation.

On the other hand, from the perspective of “Twitter 2.0 is now a toxic, alt-right cesspool where productive conversations can’t be had,” then both Threads and Bluesky are huge improvements.

Why? Open source doesn’t mean “cheap” or “at cost.”

Do you honestly think that’s because all the older toys got banned and not largely because toy companies sell whatever makes them the most money?

It’s largely the first one, at least according to The Man Who Killed Google Search.

See also the Hackernews discussion and this follow-up article by the same author (with links to an article with Google’s response, summaries of other discussions on the topic, etc.)

They aren’t. From a comment on https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/32mos6/ublock_vs_ublock_origin/ by u/tehdang:

For people who have stumbled into this thread while googling "ublock vs origin". Take a look at this link:

http://tuxdiary.com/2015/06/14/ublock-origin/

"Chris AlJoudi [current owner of uBlock] is under fire on Reddit due to several actions in recent past:

• In a Wikipedia edit for uBlock, Chris removed all credits to Raymond [Hill, original author and owner of uBlock Origin] and added his name without any mention of the original author’s contribution.
• Chris pledged a donation with overblown details on expenses like $25 per week for web hosting.
• The activities of Chris since he took over the project are more business and advertisement oriented than development driven."

So I would recommend that you go with uBlock Origin and not uBlock. I hope this helps!

Edit: Also got this bit of information from here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/32ory7/ublock_is_back_under_a_new_name/

TL;DR:

• gorhill [Raymond Hill] got tired of dozens of "my facebook isnt working plz help" issues.
• he handed the repository to chrismatic [Chris Aljioudi] while maintaining control of the extension in the Chrome webstore (by forking chrismatic's version back to himself).
• chrismatic promptly added donate buttons and a "made with love by Chris" note.
• gorhill took exception to this and asked chrismatic to change the name so people didn't confuse uBlock (the original, now called uBlock Origin) and uBlock (chrismatic's version).
• Google took down gorhill's extension. Apparently this was because of the naming issue (since technically chrismatic has control of the repo).
• gorhill renamed and rebranded his version of ublock to uBlock Origin.

It’s not changing the default behavior, so it still has it.

Per the article, they’re introducing a new opt-in feature that a woman, enbie, or person looking for same-gender matches can set up - basically a prompt that their matches can reply to.

I think Bumble also used to prevent you from sending multiple messages before getting a reply, but maybe that was a different app... If they still do that in combination with this feature, then I could see this feature continuing to accomplish their mission of empowering women in online dating.

Terrible article. Even worse advice.

On iOS at least, if you’re concerned about police breaking into your phone, you should be using a high entropy password, not a numeric PIN, and biometric auth is the best way to keep your convenience (and sanity) intact without compromising your security. This is because there is software that can break into a locked phone (even one that has biometrics disabled) by brute forcing the PIN, bypassing the 10 attempts limit if set, as well as not triggering iOS’s brute force protections, like forcing delays between attempts. If your password is sufficiently complex, then you’re more likely to be safe against such an attack.

I suspect the same is true on Android.

Such a search is supposed to require a warrant, but the tool itself doesn’t check for it, so you have to trust the individual LEOs in question to follow the law. And given that any 6 digit PIN can be brute forced in under 11 hours (40 ms per entry), this means that if you were arrested (even for a spurious charge) and held overnight, they could search your phone without you knowing.

With a password that has the same entropy as 10 random digits, assuming no further vulnerabilities allowing them to speed up the process, it could take up to 12 and a half years to brute force it. Make it alphanumeric (and still random) and it’s millions of years - infeasible within our lifetime - it’s basically a question of whether another vulnerability is already known or is discovered that enables bypassing the password entirely / much faster rates of entry.

If you’re in a situation where you expect to interact with law enforcement, then disable biometrics. Practice ahead of time to make sure you know how to do it on your phone.

For anyone who didn’t click into the original post and whose client didn’t include its text, here are the instructions for opting out:

Opt-out. You can decline this agreement to arbitrate by emailing an opt-out notice to arbitration-opt-out@discord.com within 30 days of April 15, 2024 or when you first register your Discord account, whichever is later; otherwise, you shall be bound to arbitrate disputes in accordance with the terms of these paragraphs. If you opt out of these arbitration provisions, Discord also will not be bound by them.

Note that the forced arbitration clause applies only to Discord users in the US. The class action waiver appears to apply regardless.

This is also not a new addition to their TOS, but it does appear to require opting out again even if you already did, and to grant an additional opt out opportunity if you didn’t.

Do you not think it’s relevant to point out that:

• Only 3.7% of the protests involved vandalism or property damage
• Only 2.3% of the protests involved any sort of violence (excluding vandalism or property damage)
• Much of the violence was directed against the BLM protesters
• Much of the violence was begun or escalated by police (who are supposed to be trained to de-escalate)
• Much of the property damage and property damage was not linked to protesters

If 5% of the people involved at violent BLM protests were violent and if the numbers above reflected only protester initiated violence, then that would mean roughly 0.12% of BLM protesters (or 1 in a thousand) were violent. But since, as we know, most of the violence was directed against them, that number is probably more like 0.05%, or 5 in 10,000. Obviously that number would be much worse for the actual instigators of most of the violence (police and far-right Trump supporters).

Main source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summers-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelming-peaceful-our-research-finds/

Also weird that you say “like 30 people” died when it was more like 10:

• 8 BLM protesters
• 1 far-right, pro-Trump protester, who was shot by a self-identified anti-fascist protester who said he had been acting in self-defense
• the above anti-fascist protester, who was shot by police

Yes, there were like 25 deaths related to political unrest in 2020, but most of those were not at BLM protests. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled

But hey, keep telling yourself that an active, intentionally orchestrated attempt by Trump and his supporters to violently overturn the results of our Presidential election was “basically the same thing lol” as a bunch of people who were protesting police violence and racism.

the next-generation Switch might still be able to hold its own in terms of graphics performance with Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X|S in some optimized titles.

I’ll believe that when I see it.

It’s generally understood that sharing child sex abuse materials, regardless of intent, is not only a federal crime in the U.S. and Australia, but re-victimizes the child.

Excuse my ignorance, but why wasn’t this guy arrested? And why is it “news” that X restored his account but an arrest - or even lack of one - wasn’t even mentioned?